Licensing COVID-19 Illustrations

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Things may seem to be falling apart at the seams, and the leaders of the world either aren’t listening to the scientists who’ve spent their lives studying virology, microbiology and pandemics or they have their own agendas that run counter to saving lives. But this isn’t a blog post about politics! Life goes on and everyone needs to adjust to a new normal. When the lockdown started in the UK, we created a page for our illustrators to showcase their COVID-19 illustrations with the aim of licensing them out to journalists, periodicals and general editorials on their behalf. So far this has been quite a successful initiative and many of our members have had the opportunity to work with clients they may not have normally, had circumstances not been as they are. We want to maintain this success and we’re continuing to update the licensing page with new illustrations as they arrive.

When we launched the COVID-19 illustration licensing page, we decided not to take any commission (like an agent would) on the illustration licensing fees so that our members gained maximum benefit, even when we were handling everything from the negotiations to the exchange of contracts on the illustrator’s behalf. In addition to that, for every illustration we license out, we’re making a donation (out of our own pockets) to our local homeless shelter, equal to 5% of what the illustrator gets paid for the use of their artwork.

Over 70 artists have taken part in this initiative so far, with some providing multiple illustrations. We’re encouraging them to send us more artwork, and we’ll get them up on the page as soon as we can. Of course, that doesn’t mean that if you’re in need of an image you have to wait until you see an illustration that fulfils your needs. All of our illustrators are open to commissions and they’d be more than happy to create a custom artwork for your article or project. All you need to do is message the illustrator you want to work with, with information about the job, and they will work up a quote for you.